Flashback Fridays: Jensen’s Recreation Center Sign
Photo by Echo Park Now
The Jensen’s Recreation Center building has always been a favorite Echo Park monument of mine. A historic cultural monument since 1998, the 86-year-old building has undergone quite a few changes inside.
The old bowling alley at Jensen's. Flickr photo via Mary-Austin & Scott
The building was built by German immigrant Henry Christian Jensen in 1924 and designed by architect E.E.B. Meinardus. Originally, it was a bowling alley with a pool hall at street level with 46 apartments on the other two floors. The Echo Park Historical Society website describes the space as catering to mostly males throughout the 1930s and ’40s. Even though the storefronts might not look exactly the same as the original structure, thankfully the Beaux Arts and Italianate inspired ornamentation that wraps around the outside of the building still exists.
The bowling alley is no longer there, but the sign featuring a bowling figure remains on the roof of the building. The 28 feet wide x 17 feet tall sign has 1300 red, green and white incandescent lightbulbs. An interesting fact: even though neon was a more popular application for signs in the 1920s (especially this size!), this one maintains the incandescent light bulbs.
Relighting of the sign. Photo from Paul Furlong
In 1997, after 50 years of neglect and the sign unlit, it was restored and relit through a cultural affairs grant. We’re not exactly sure how long the sign was lighting up the Rec Center roof, but we do know it was fixed and relit again in 2005. However, that lasted only one month, and the sign has been dark ever since.
Lately there’s been some great headway to relight the sign. The Echo Park Historical Society received $5,000 from an LA County Historic Preservation Society grant. Echo Park residents, fans of history, and Echo Park Improvement Association members have also privately donated to fix and maintain the sign as well. And just this week, the Greater Elysian Echo Park Neighborhood Council approved the allocation of $2,500 to the Historical Society for the restoration of the sign.
Hopefully we’ll see the sign relit (and maintained) some day soon!
If you’d like to donate to the Echo Park Historical Society for the restoration and upkeep of the sign, click here for the EPHS website.
Flashback Fridays: Old Fire Station No. 6
The CCAC, photo from EPIAn Ways October 2000
A mention in the most recent Echo Park Improvement Association’s newsletter (EPIAn Ways) this month caught our interest – it’s been a whole ten years since the Central City Action Committee (CCAC) cut the ribbon on its current location in Old Fire Station No. 6 on Edgeware Road in Echo Park. Citing an article from the October 2000 issue of EPIAn Ways, the grand opening celebrated not only the organization, which organizes youth activities and graffiti removal in the area, but also displayed a “mini museum” of historical fire department photos. We thought we’d do some research on those photos and the history of Old Fire Station No. 6 for this week’s Flashback Friday.
Flashback Fridays: The Echo building and Sunset Blvd.
This week’s flashback is another fun photo find, this time along Sunset Boulevard. We’re not certain when these photographs were taken, but my amateur classic car knowledge places it around the 1920s or early ’30s (please let me know if this is inaccurate and we’ll happily revise!).
The photo above shows the building where The Echo is currently located. The original architecture on the left-hand side of the image, where the arches are, display what is now Two Boots and Origami Vinyl, the central entrance is now The Echo.
Makes you kind of wish the arches on the right-hand side were maintained, right now there’s the old Nayarit Restaurant sign.
The photo on the right is around, I believe, the same time. This is taken from Sunset Blvd. on the Bridge that crosses over Glendale Blvd.. Notice the wooden sidewalk along the left side of the street, and you can see the Jensen’s Recreation sign in the distance. And of course, the trolley lines zigzag across the sky.
Flickr photos via Echo_29
Flashback Fridays: Flooding in Echo Park
Unknown date, possibly late 1930s. Source: Paul Furlong
More flooding in 1959. LA Public Library image #28410
We’re trying to piece together little bits of history surrounding photos like one shown above – flooding along Glendale Blvd. at Park Avenue was extremely common prior to the paving of the Los Angeles river. But how all that water got to Echo Park (remember, this is prior to all flood control in Los Angeles) is actually an interesting story.
The story starts with a buried river called the Arroyo de los Reyes, which originates off of Glendale Blvd. near the 2 terminus. It flowed down Glendale, to where Echo Park Lake now is, and into downtown down 2nd Street where it ends up just south of Pershing Square and eventually connecting to the LA River (Source: LA Creek Freak).
So it makes sense this area would be more susceptible to flooding – when it really, really rains, the creek/river would swell, and so on and so forth. We’re not sure exactly when the river was buried or why exactly it no longer floods Echo Park, perhaps due to being buried, but it might also have to do with the storm drain and flood control in the late ’30s, early ’40s.
The photo to the bottom right is a pretty severe flood on Glendale Boulevard during the Los Angeles Flood of 1938, caused by a couple of storms from the pacific and killing over 100 people and $40 million in damage.
Glendale Blvd., Feb 1938. Photo source: Paul Furlong
These floods, especially the 1938 one, prompted the Flood Control Act of 1941, and thus the construction of mandatory storm drains and flood control channels. This, of course, means the Los Angeles River was paved to help control future flooding.
Looking at these pictures, it seems like a good idea to have some flood control in Los Angeles. But the paving of the LA River is more and more criticized as being a misguided effort because it interferes with, well, the natural flow of things. There are some green movements to help the River filter out pollution and revitalize the river overall, you can learn a lot about lost rivers and creaks through the LA Creek Freak blog and the Friends of the LA River.
Get your tickets for Eco Echo Park home tours
in Community News, History, Lifestyle | 0 comments
The 2010 Echo Park Historical Society home tour date has been announced for Sunday, November 14. The theme this year is “Eco Echo Park: Urban Sustainable Living.” The tour will feature properties that utilize “gray water systems, solar power, natural light and circulation as ways to reduce dependency on public utilities.” They will also be showcasing properties that use native and drought-tolerant plants, no-dig gardens and urban farmers that raise livestock and/or crops for personal consumption.
Renew your annual membership to the Echo Park Historical Society for a discounted price of $15 for admission to the home tour. They are also accepting $25 donations to help re-light the sign on top of Jensen’s Recreation Center in Echo Park (which has been left unlit for several years now).
Individual subscriptions are $15, $25 for households, $40 for businesses, and $250 for a lifetime membership.
Go to www.historicechopark.org to buy your tickets in advance. Save $5 if you buy your tickets by November 1!
Flashback Fridays: Our very first oil well
Edward L. Doheny (Source: LAPL photo #00028209)
You might know that Los Angeles has a long history of oil (there’s those, you know, La Brea Tar Pits, in case you forgot), but did you know Echo Park is the site of the first Los Angeles oil well?
It was Edward Doheny and Charles Canfield who dug this well in 1892. The story goes, Doheny was in downtown when he saw some guys pushing a heavy cart full of this black, sticky stuff called “brea” (Spanish for “pitch”). The driver told him he had pulled out of a hold near Westlake Park. Learning that the pitch was a fuel replacement for coal, he and Canfield raised money to buy a three-lot parcel at the corner of Patton and State streets, and started digging by hand.
Months later and after 155 feet, the fumes were making everyone sick. They built a crude drilling rig, using a eucalyptus tree trunk, which broke and delays the drilling for weeks until they got the broken rig out of the hole and fixed it. Finally, in March 1893 after 225 feet, the site became the first free-flowing oil well ever drilled in Los Angeles.
“I had found gold and I had found silver and I had found lead,” wrote Doheny, “but this ugly-looking substance… was the key to something more valuable than any or all of these metals.”
They produced 40 barrels per day, selling it for $2 pr barrel (50 cents below market rate). The well pumped for three years, and eventually, Doheny and Canfield expanded their partnership around Los Angeles, making a fortune.
You can read all about it in The Dark Side of Fortune.
Flickr photo via The Eastsider LA
Why show a picture of the Echo Park pool, you ask? Well, the parking lot is the exact site of the oil well. If you are interested in checking out the long history of oil wells in Los Angeles, you might want to read about the urban oil wells bus tour from Spring 2010 led by the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) – there are some interesting sites you might want to visit some day!
